Prayer and Hope

Since Nouwen's words on prayer are so powerful, and prayer is so important for our lives, I shall continue on with some further words of his:

To pray means to open your hands before God.  It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive.  Above all, prayer is a way of life which allows you to find a stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God's promises and find hope for yourself, your neighbor, and your world.  In prayer, you encounter God not only in the small voice and the soft breeze, but also in the midst of the turmoil of the world, in the distress and joy of your neighbor, and in the loneliness of your own heart.

-With Open Hands

There are so many powerful words there—so many powerful ideas.  If I were to summarize them in one word it would be this one: abandonment.

For the idea of abandonment is, to put it simply, to let go of yourself and your needs and wants in all situations in order to find God everywhere and to be open to receiving the gifts and graces He is pouring out upon you.  It is particularly true that we must find Him in the loneliness of our own hearts.  That is where it is most difficult to find Him sometimes.  We seek to fill that loneliness with everything except an openness to Him because it is painful to experience.

Yet in prayer we must accept that loneliness and embrace that pain if we want to truly begin to know this God so much greater than our minds can fathom.  For in that acceptance, that surrender, we begin a true communion of hearts—the true purpose of prayer—and we find a source for a burning hope.